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Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

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Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#321

Post by rvo »

novia wrote: post #192

Hi everyone. I'm a woman with a math degree who just completed a computer programming certificate. I've wanted to study math my whole life, and I wasn't exposed to programming as a field of study until college. I just wanted to state that, for the record, having these sorts of discussions on hacker news is extremely distressing to me. I've worked hard to get the accreditations that I have, and I usually enjoy the thi…

There is the flip side too. I wouldn't want to be known as the diversity hire. I want to be judged on my work and my skills. Not on what chromosomes I carry or what my melenin level is.

The more we keep framing things in the context of hiring to meet gender based quotas, the more people will see us as diversity hires. I would hate that more than knowing someone doesn't like me because of my gender because that persons mind I can maybe change via my skills and work.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#322

Post by D3nTe »

scarmig wrote: post #26

This reminds me of something I was thinking about earlier today. It's well known that men generally are stagnating economically, while women are catching up. In many metro areas, single women out earn single men. And so I came across this paper[0], which had some interesting research about that. And what struck me was this: there's an explicit assumption that men have worse socio-emotional skills than women, and that…

Unfortunately it applies to almost every topic now. It seems like you can't have a nuanced opinion on anything, you're either pro or anti, right or left.

In the end the people with an actual opinion and interesting things to say don't talk, and the idiots throwing bullshit around scream louder and louder.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#323

Post by jcadam »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #257
traverseda wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most men I know are pretty heavily in favour of equality. That might change if we treat equality as a war against men, instead of something we all work towards. Adapting behavior is reasonable, but there's men also need to be able to have a voice, or you're going to get some major pushback. Hopefully we can keep this kind of war at a low simmer when trump is up for re-election. More specifically, that means making su…

The problem with silencing tactics currently in use that doesn't seem to be understood by those using them is that there is no such tactic that works in the voting booth. As long as we have secret ballots, the Shy Tory Effect is going continue to catch the censorship crowd off guard. I doubt this is going to be kept on simmer because we're already past that point. To continue the analogy, the pot will eventually boil…

I personally don't see how we get out of this toxic situation with our Republic intact.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#324

Post by mhb »

scarmig wrote: post #26

This reminds me of something I was thinking about earlier today. It's well known that men generally are stagnating economically, while women are catching up. In many metro areas, single women out earn single men. And so I came across this paper[0], which had some interesting research about that. And what struck me was this: there's an explicit assumption that men have worse socio-emotional skills than women, and that…

We All Live on Campus Now: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/we-all-live-on-...

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#325

Post by Veelox »

edna314 wrote: post #95

I don't get it. Why is equality of outcome not a desirable goal, especially in science and technology? These authors only try to disprove theories which potentially explain the inequality and then conclude that there is no injustice. This is logically flawed in my opinion. In order to justify the inequality they would need to come up with a plausible theory why the inequality is inevitable and then support it with so…

>Why is equality of outcome not a desirable goal, especially in science and technology?

I am going to try and describe this in a math/programming way.

Say we have two functions randM() and randF() the first returns a Male Person, the second returns a Female Person. Person has an Ability and a Preference. We also have a function stemJob(Person p) that takes a Person and returns a Job with an Income, Prestige, and Satisfaction.

Equality of outcome would mean that after 10^9 calls of each the this is true average(stemJob(randM()) == average(stemJob(randF()). This could be either because 1a) randM() and randF() produce on average the same person modulo Sex and stemJob() does not consider Sex or 1b) The difference between the average randM() and randF() is corrected for by stemJob() considering Sex.

The other option is equality of chance where stemJob(randM()) == stemJob(randF()) where randM() and randF() have the same Ability and Preference.

Notice that in equality of chance and in equality of outcome stemJob() may or may not be the same. If randM() and randF() produce on average the same person modulo Sex then stemJob() is the same for both equality of chance and equality of outcome. If that assumption does not hold then stemJob() must be different.

Thus, if I support equality of chance and believe avg(randM()) != avg(randF()) I would not support equality of outcome because that would require stemJob to consider Sex in a way that invalids equality of chance.

Hope this give you a different way to look at why some people are against equality of outcome in STEM.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#326

Post by sp332 »

simonsarris wrote: post #287
tptacek wrote: post #152

Once again: compared to other STEM fields, women participate less in CS than any other field except physics. By double digits percentage more in mathematics PhDs. Statistics is almost 50/50. Several rigorous earth sciences fields --- chem and biochem, for instance --- have 50% or greater female participation. One thing all these fields have in common is that they are more intellectually rigorous and harder to succeed…

> One thing all these fields have in common is that they are more intellectually rigorous and harder to succeed in than the computer software industry. Can we rank these fields by day to day... sociability? Or how solitary they are? Say, by the number of coworkers you talk to on a given day for a given number of hours. Or the amount of time you spend not at all speaking, and staring at a screen? Can we approximate th…

Companies started explicitly hiring less-social applicants starting in the late 60's. http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-how-...

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#327

Post by hocuspocus »

signal11 wrote: post #236
tptacek wrote: post #152

Once again: compared to other STEM fields, women participate less in CS than any other field except physics. By double digits percentage more in mathematics PhDs. Statistics is almost 50/50. Several rigorous earth sciences fields --- chem and biochem, for instance --- have 50% or greater female participation. One thing all these fields have in common is that they are more intellectually rigorous and harder to succeed…

Is there any regional variation? e.g. are there more women in CS depts and industry in Asia than in the US? How about Europe?

Yes, and it's mentioned in the article. There seem to be a negative correlation between gender-equality and the proportion of female students in computer science.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#328

Post by alexandercrohde »

Raphmedia wrote: post #291
alexandercrohde wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unclear if you're asking the community not to have a discussion because you don't want to read it? There's a way to hide posts you don't want to read, I do it all the time with bitcoin articles.

Sexism* is rampant. It is not merely present in threads where the link is about gender studies. You cannot "block it out" like you would any other topic. It is not a "topic of discussion" but an issue lurking behind other topics. *Sexism has can take many shapes others than direct attacks on women. Edit: Interesting how this went from +5 to -5 in minutes. Very controversial topic, eh?

I guess this doesn't answer my question. What's the ask here? OP suggested this discussion was "incredibly distressing," I'm unclear if anybody is entertaining the notion that a debate among dozens cannot happen because one person wanders in who's distressed by it, or what?

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#329

Post by gu56esfhi5 »

Shut tab when they first drop “microaggression”

2017 saw a number of papers that found little evidence to support the notions often pushed by groups that back use of the term

Given the failure to reproduce issue in humanities, I’m inclined to take theories there with a brick of salt

If someone wants to talk a real platform for universal healthcare, mental health svcs, funding education, infrastructure, and lifelong education/study type way of life, I’m all about it

Papers like this just scream “bourgeoisie peddling a minor update to traditional values and neoliberalism.”

“Let these groups into our factories and labs.”

Sure, all for it. Have been for decades.

What about the social structures that have us focused on profit motives over discovery and self agency?

Now that they’re in the labs are they just stuck being bored wage slaves, having their work expropriated because they’re not rich?

Same with women and the draft. It should go away for all. But it’s somehow more equal to oblige them to their death should the call arise.

Well, more equal for the proles.

Here we have people who could afford and education telling the world how to behave, based on evidence that in my digging and serious conversations with scholars and proponents of microagression theories, is based mostly upon the frequency with which certain words appear in our discourse.

That just seems vain as hell. Here’s my theory for fixing a problem. It relies on some basic stats but ignores looking for other explanations

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#330

Post by fwdpropaganda »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #266

To get a little meta: I think discussions like these make progress, but very slow progress. I think the root of the issue for many people is more than factual at this point, it's become emotional for both sides. And I think progress will come when both sides can get a handle on their frustrations and then articulate their feelings gracefully. At the end of the day, I think only a very small percentage of people comme…

Why is it accepted that feelings should be relevant here? I'm not trying to be provocative, I'm genuinely open to listen to your response to that.

To paraphrase Data O'Briain, "zombies are at an all-time low but the fear of zombies could be incredibly high, doesn't mean we should have government policies to deal with the fear of zombies": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zopCDSK69gs

If we're getting meta, I think that the first thing that should be discussed is: What are we optimizing for, and how do we measure it?

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